Popper was, figuratively, in love with Xenophon.
Grice was literally in love with Kantotle (or 'sweetheart Ariskant,' as he
also composed sonnet for).
The issue is polemic.
For Popper, Xenophon was the teacher of Parmenides, as if Parmenides's
views agrees more with Popper, that is neither here nor there, since Xenophon
is earlier, and as historians we should also aim at the earliest occurrence
of something (cfr. Foucault on the archaeology of 'knowledge').
There are differences, though.
Grice was a Royal Navy captain and he knew what he was talking about when
he wrote about longitudinal. It is the opposite of LATITUDINAL. Recall
Alice, "I never know which is which". "Only conventional signs?", as one of
the
tripulation in the Hunting of the Snark goes? Don't think so. Grice
doesn't think so.
The keyword is UNITY, though: there's philosophy's latitudinal unity: all
branches of philosophy unite. "Philosophy, like virtue, is entire".
Popper's claim to fame is as a "philosopher of science" and this would for
Grice
refudiate the 'latitudinal unity'. For we would need to prove that
philosophy of science has a bit of this, metaphysics, and a bit of that,
morals, and
a bit of t'other, epistemology.
Grice's obituary came out as "professional philosopher" (note: "not of
science") and amateur cricketer", which fares slightly better.
The second difference is the shoes.
For Grice, who was a tutor in philosophy (simpliciter) and "University
Lecturer in Philosophy" simpliciter (at Oxford) he was used to two things:
-- torture his students with a recent essay in "Mind" or "Aristotelian
Society"
-- torture his students with a comparison of the above with some
'classical' reading (Aristotle, Kant).
"Anyone who has taught philosophy knows that topics scan the centuries."
What is one to do?
Read the classics as if they were talking to us TODAY: introject in their
shoes. This is okay if the classic author is a 'great', like Kantotle --
"not so much if it's a minor figure like Bosanquet, Wollaston, or Witters",
he adds for sarcasm.
Popper thinks Xenophon practiced his (Popper's) philosophy of conjectures
of refutations (a methodology that is normatively ascribed to the
development of science within a specific discipline called "philosophy of
science).
This is the Xenophon that believed that since the earth is indeterminate
(cfr. 'apeiron') what we think is the same sun is not: a new sun appears
every new day.
Grice never actually engaged seriously in longitudinal philosophy other
than offer his witticisms that he was grice for the mill, and that he adored
Kantotle. When in Berkeley his love for the first part of Kantotle
(Immanuel) grew, as did his interest in moral philosophy. But the second part
(the
Stagirite) was always there. So much so that when he published
(posthumously) the Kant lectures he added as an extra lecture one on happiness
discussing his tutee J. L. Ackrill's idea that we should take Aristotle's
keyword
of eudaimon literally: one's guardian angel, as it were.
Popper's philosophical historiography has been criticised. Which is no
wonder, since, as Magee -- and should I dare say, McEvoy -- have pointed out,
much of Popper's philosophy has been maligned by the anti-Popperians. The
History of Philosophy is a serious business and Popper's notes on Xenophon
are posthumous. Perhaps Grice's Greek was better, too. He had learned it
'immersion-wise', as it were, back in Clifton (a public, oops, private,
educational institution near the suspension bridge in what was then Somerset or
Gloucestershire, but is now Avon -- as in the soap company). Grecian (or
Greek) was second nature to Grice (and Griceians) and he would never have made
it to Oxford had his Greek not been THAT good, since he arrived in the city
of the dreaming spires (he could be corny) as a Midlands scholarship boy
(straight to "The House", or Corpus Christi, which specialised in the
classics -- and of course his goal was not to specialise in philosophy, there
was
no such thing, but in Lit. Hum., as he did. And stop at the BA level; then
pay an extra fee to turn that BA into an MA and that was that. He had
THINGS to do: he would never miss a match of the Oxfordshire Cricket Club.
Popper's encounter with the pre-socratics was perhaps different. Schlick
possibly detested them. The Vienna Circle in general possibly detested them;
and we would need to know Popper's credentials in philosophical
historiography.
But with Xenophon Popper _is_ trying, if failing, to introject into his
shoes. Rather, Popper wants Xenophon's sandals (or barefeet -- you never know
with Southern Italians, and Xenophon was south of Napoli) to become
Popper's Viennese boots. Popper wants Xenophon to speak Popperese. This is
okay,
but anti-Griceian.
Grice wrote a number of essays with the names of other philosophers in
their titles (as Popper did with his "The Unknown Xenophon"):
-- Hume and the quandaries of personal identity (co-written with Haugeland)
-- Kant on morals (co-written with Judith Baker).
-- Descartes on clear and distinct perception
and my favourite:
-- Aristotle on the multiplicity of being.
This latter was published posthumously by B. Loar in the Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly. It's Grice's idea of hizzing and hazzing, but one sees
all
the quotations in Greek that Grice took the trouble to retrieve from
Aristotle's works. When he arrived in Berkeley (that's UC/Berkeley) indeed he
complained (privately, of course, he was a Brit) that his graduate students
needed to rely on the "English" Aristotle -- Ross's Aristotle. Grice did not.
His tutor at Corpus had taught him elsewise, Hardie did.
While Popper deals with this or that Greek idiom in the Xenophon fragments
(e.g. 'opinion' translated by Popper as 'conjecture') I don't think he is
into the 'linguistic botany' and the close textual analysis that Grice was.
It is true that Popper's had big views about Hegel (anti-Hegelian big
views) and later became a defendant of Kant (as if Kant needed them) when it
came to this idea of the 'categorial' structure of, say, our perception.
Admittedly, Popper had an advantage over Grice: German. When Grice was
fighting
with the first part of his true love, Kantotle (Immanuel) he WOULD rely
occasionally on translation. This is evident in his conversational
categories, echoed from Kant, jocularly:
QUANTITAS
QUALITAS
RELATIO
MODUS
are the Latinate versions used by Kant's translators. Sometimes, they have
"Modus" as "Manner" and Grice followed suit. But in the basic vocabulary
of his conversational logic, Grice remained a Kantian: maxim, principle,
imperative, and the regulative role of reason, both theoretical and practical.
But then Kant's first love was possible Kantotle's second part, the
Stagirite, so we reach full circle.
Xenophon can be viewed in such views that he becomes a defendant of
inductivism. And while the introduction of Xenophon was made by McEvoy
vis-à-vis
a quotation by Sextus Empiricus ("Against the mathematicians") it is
obvious that if Popper loved Xenophon it was because Xenophon is no sceptic
(as
Sextus is). For Popper is into a tirade into Scepticism that would deny what
he sees as the progress of science (and natural science being his goal, as
per the subtitle, rarely quoted, of his opus magnum: Logik der Forschung,
which reads, something like 'an investigation into the epistemology of
modern natural science') for Popper thought that the ultimate Xenophon was, of
all people, Einstein!
On one occasion, Grice says that he wished he knew some non-Indo-European
language ('as my friend Fritz Staal does') for he HOPED (and indeed knew)
that this longitudinal unity of philosophy applied to more than what we may
still call European philosophy (or English philosophy, of Oxford philosophy)
-- and Staal later would prove that profusely.
Popper loved Xenophon for his being 'so early' -- and Xenophon allows
Popper to even comment on Thales, the starter of it all! -- philosophy, I mean
-- when he fell on the well when looking at the stars above! ("Clumsy," his
fellow countrymen in Miletus would scorn him -- but did he care for the
invited implicature?!)
Perhaps another aspect that appealed to Popper about Xenophon that he was a
'movable philosopher', who finally settled south of Napoli. In this
respect, Popper also moved, as did Grice,
Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
-- the motto that the inhabitants of what would become Berkeley were
thinking when the named what would become Berkeley "Berkeley".
As Kripke notes:
"Actually sentences like 'Socrates is called "Socrates"' are very
interesting and one can spend, strange as it may seem, hours talking about
their analysis. I actually did, once, do that. I won't do that, however,
on
this occasion. (See how high the seas of language can rise. And at the
lowest points, too.)"
Ditto for Grice is called "Grice" and Berkeley is called "Berkeley" -- The
fact that Grice settled and bought a house in the name of a philosopher is
very indicative of his love for the longitudinal unity of philosophy. For
are there towns called Kant, one wonders. The original spelling of course,
Kant being Scots, was "Cant". But Kant's father noted that the fellow
countrymen in Koenigsberg tended to pronounce that as /sant/ which he
disliked.
And I would not be surprised if someone decided to call a town Platonopolis
-- but "Aristotle" does not yield easily to a toponym, unless it does.
Cheers,
Speranza
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